Prehistoric Planet S3 - Nov 27

 

Obligatory disclaimer – real life sucks, so let us talk about ‘Prehistoric Planet’, and especially the latest, 3^rd, season. What can be said about it?

…Looks like the people behind the show also feel like RL sucks and so they decided to spruce their stories… with drama! Many stories behind the clips feature cute baby animals getting into mortal danger, (occasionally the animal in danger is of a different age, but that changes little), and they escape the carnivores just in time, (or their parents help them), more often than not.

Take for example, the dwarf elephants vs. giant storks in 3x02 (“New Lands”). A fuzzy little dwarf Stegodon (elephant) calf is in trouble, but her mum arrives and fights off the giant storks with their huge, solid, and sharp beaks. Not that I wanted the elephants to perish, but modern storks (Jabiru storks, to be more precise), are sometimes able to fight off modern caimans with their beaks, and those storks were the bigger birds here. I have no idea why they would be intimidated by the dwarf elephant mum – I somewhat expected her to retreat with new bruises and wounds, (while her calf got away herself in the commotion). The calf herself has adorability level dialled up to maximum – to have the audiences root for her, no doubt.

The same goes for the Aepyornis (elephant bird) hatchlings – they are adorable so that the audiences root for them, and not for the giant prehistoric fossa, (whose existence is still debatable, BTW). Pause.

Here is the thing – the problem is not in the visuals and the CGI – they are great, but in the scrip and its’ repeating, well, repetition – repeatedly we get the same thing – an animal is in trouble from a carnivore, but escapes. Either that, or the carnivore gets its’ meal – ‘tis column A or column B, not much else.

By contrast, look at the much earlier TV series. The original ‘Walking with…’ series set the standard not just in visuals, but also in the plots. ‘Walking with Dinosaurs’-1999 and ‘Walking with Prehistoric Beasts’-2001, for example, was about evolution of life on Earth, but each of their episodes, (each series had just 6) told a different story: a sauropod’s coming of age, a pterosaur’s last trip around the globe, struggles of a prehistoric whale to keep herself and her unborn calf fed, etc. Some episodes had a main character, (such as Half-Tooth, an ousted Smilodon male), while others were less concentrated and focused, say, on the life in the late Jurassic seas in general; they didn’t restrict themselves to primarily predator/prey and parent/child interaction and told a more complex story overall.

Other series… ‘Chased by Dinosaurs’ and ‘Sea Monsters’ (2002-2003) were more entertainment than education; ‘Sea Monsters’ even had an online game for a while. ‘Walking with Monsters’ (2005) was the last entry in the series until the 2025 revival, it was shorter and streamlined, with much more CGI, but even so, it focused on evolution of life on Earth, not just birds hunting elephants or vice versa. In addition ‘Walking with Cavemen’ (2003) was about human evolution (4 episodes) and is something entirely – these day, the media do not like to talk about human evolution aloud; they cannot deny it, thankfully, but since 2003 there was nothing like WWC either.

Moreover, the original ‘Walking with…’ series were not unique. BBC also released – In 2002 – another mini-series called ‘Prehistoric America’ about – you probably guessed it – prehistoric America. The first five episodes talked about the different ecosystems of that time, from the frozen north to the prehistoric prairies; the final episode talked about the human colonization of North America, from the Ice Age to the modern times…

In addition, in 2003 there were ‘Monsters We Met’, which discussed humans meeting the last of the megafauna – in North America, Australia, and New Zealand (plus other south Pacific islands). Again, MWM talked about a very important topic – how the early humans contributed to the extinction of the last megafauna (up to date). ‘Prehistoric Planet’ S3 never did, even though it covered a much narrower scope of time – only the Pleistocene epoch, while the other shows covered the entire Cainozoic time period, for example, or, in case of ‘Prehistoric America’, they discussed the Pleistocene North America in much greater detail. ‘Prehistoric Planet’ comes across here as jack-of-all-trades instead, and that is not exactly a compliment here… Less anthropomorphic drama there, too…

Therefore, in conclusion, ‘Prehistoric Planet’ S3 was not a bad show, but it was only a show, nothing more, leaving me, for one, with mixed feelings. Ah well, real life sucks, but the way ‘Prehistoric Planet’ S3 handled that is not necessarily an improvement… See you all soon!

Dawn of Humanity - Oct 4

…While AoS took this Tuesday off, for some reason, maybe we can talk about something else?  

... Well, what is there else, really? How about ‘Dawn of Humanity’ documentary that I had also seen last week? It is a very interesting, two-hour-long, program about the discovery of two new species – Australopithecus sediba and Homo naledi.

From the scientific point of view, the issue is this. There are ancient hominins, ancient humans, sort of like us, but are, (or were), our ancestors, rather than us (from a biological angle, etc.). And then there were the australopithecines, who were the ancestors and the predecessors of these hominins, they – basically – were apes, albeit ones that walked like humans do: it seems that bipedalism has evolved first; other features, such as the big brains and tool making came later.

So far so good. And?

‘Dawn of Humanity’ makes a BIG emphasis about the missing link; in this case between the australopithecines and the first of the hominins. When I was studying anthropology, this niche was given to Homo habilis, the ‘handy man’, but many anthropologists grew dissatisfied with habilis – some think that this was just another australopithecine, while others are just doubtful, period.

This is probably the appropriate time to re-introduce one of Impossible Pictures’ special series – Walking with Cavemen – and what is basically its’ literary counterpart, the book ‘Dawn of Man’. The former is two-hour series dedicated to the entire human evolution; the latter is the same thing, just discussing the prehistoric human evolution in eight chapters. The information may be outdated in some aspects – for example, it does not talk about sediba or naledi because they were not discovered back then – but, basically, this information is still good, actual, and reliable. Is there a problem?

With WWC the issue is that it isn’t a documentary series, but more of a docu-drama, discussing various aspects of human evolution in a rushed manner (each episode is about 30 minutes long and feels kind of rushed, especially the 3^rd and the last episodes). Bipedalism, tool-making and adaptability, intelligence, imagination and the spiritual dimension of human lives is what being really discussed in WWC, rather than human evolution per se, as it was in ‘Dawn of Humanity’…sort of. In reality, ‘Dawn of Humanity’ depicted the discovery of the two aforementioned species with some discussion where did they fit into the evolution from australopithecines to early humans: Homo naledi may be one of the first humans; Australopithecus sediba, on the other hand, is too chronologically old to be the direct ancestor of humans; but-

However, the entire early African stage of evolution that led to humanity is a mess. The documentary made it sound as if it was South Africa that was the cradle of humanity, but in reality, so was the East Africa, and then there is Australopithecus bahrelghazali. It was yet another species of Australopithecus, but it was also found in the jungles of Central Africa, rather than in the African east or south. Indeed, Central Africa is the place where some of the oldest ape fossils – Sahelantropus, Orrorin, and the others – were found.

How is that for a theory? There were several versions of Australopithecines in Africa, maybe species, or maybe – regional variants, (more like subspecies). Eventually, some of these subspecies/variants/species gave rather to the first hominins (naledi, or habilis, or even rudolfensis, which is discussed even less so than the habilis is, apparently), while the others gave rise to Paranthropus boisei and its relatives. It has happened, after all, when a single species gave to rise to several new ones; for example, Homo heidelbergensis gave rise both to the Neanderthals and to the Cro-Magnons, the modern humans. Why couldn’t the australopithecines do that?

In any case, ‘Dawn of Humanity’ was still a very fun and exciting documentary to watch, which I did, and I advise you to watch it as well, especially if you like anthropology. For now, though – bye!